Christine's walking & birds blog

We set off from home at about nine o'clock this morning, walking through unbelievably quiet streets - a village drowsy with Sunday lie-ins. I yawned, wishing I was still in bed myself as I didn't sleep very well last night.

I was soon cheered up when a smallish dragonfly darting about between trees landed on a goat willow and turned out to be exactly what I've been hoping to see - a second northern emerald dragonfly, in this case a female. An Ullapool lockdown-walk northern emerald!


We heard the wood warbler again but failed to see it. We wandered on high ground where pools and bogs lay sparkling in the bright sunshine, and where four-spotted chasers ceaselessly patrolled the airspace just above the water.

Back down from the heights, something like a furry bee was on a low bank. My attentions put it to flight, but I just managed a record shot of my first narrow-bordered bee hawk-moth. An Ullapool lockdown-walk insect lifer! The long clubbed antennae can just be seen in the picture.


There were two other interesting sightings. One was of a darkish deer which uttered several sharp screamy calls. It might have been a sika deer; as I watched it flee from our approach, it appeared to be bouncing along off all four legs (known apparently as "pronking"). The second was a group of trees, one of which was rowan, and the rest of which had leaves like those of sessile oak - although the trunks resembled the rowan trunks. More research on that needed. (Later: could be turkey oak - there are some in the village.)